Comparing elements between a character and a numerical column

Not sure if this is written correctly. Suppose there is a cell array where the first column holds characters ie) 'con', 'func', key', and the second column holds numerical values ie) 74 85 98. For x = 1:length(Event) [where event is the array], if event{x,1} is 'con' AND the cell immediately after it (x+1) is 'key', take the horizontal values and place those in a new array. For example:

Column 1 = ['con', 'key', 'con', 'con', 'var', 'con', key'] Column 2 = [ 74 85 94 67 56 84 23]

The new array would look like Column 1 = ['con', 'key', 'con, 'key'] column 2 = [74 85 84 23]

for x = 1:length(event)
    if event{x,1} == 'con' & event{x+1,1} == 'key'
        iEvent = event{x,:}
    end
end

One of the issues I think is that == does not work with characters?

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

Here ares some fake data using your pattern and a solution. The solution identifies the rows of 'data' where 'key' follows 'con' and puts all of those rows into a new variable, 'output'.

data = {
    'con' 74;
    'key' 85;
    'con' 94;
    'con' 67;
    'var' 56;
    'con' 84;
    'key' 23
    'con' 67;
    'var' 56;
    'con' 84;
    'key' 23}; 

% row indices of con & key
isCon = strcmp(data(:,1), 'con'); 
isKey = strcmp(data(:,1), 'key'); 

% rows of 'key' where 'con' preceded
ConKeyIdx = find(isKey(2:end) & isCon(1:end-1)); 
ConKeySubs = sort([ConKeyIdx;ConKeyIdx+1]); %row numbers of con-key neighbors

output = data(ConKeySubs,:); 

output =
    {'con'}    {[74]}
    {'key'}    {[85]}
    {'con'}    {[84]}
    {'key'}    {[23]}
    {'con'}    {[84]}
    {'key'}    {[23]}

[Jasmine Karim]

Thank you this works great! I should have thought to use strcmp with characters...